It is known for a user to wear a head mounted camera, which points in the same direction as the facing direction of the face of a user, i.e., wearer of the camera, so that the camera captures images that are approximately the same as the images in the field of view of the user.
This type of set-up does not take into consideration the user moving his eyes relative to his head, so that the resultant images are often poorly framed.
Head-mounted cameras are well known, such as that described in WO9949656 (Mann). The system described in Mann assumes that the head direction is the correct direction for image capture. Any control of the image that is captured needs to be done by the user consciously pointing his head in the direction of interest. Sophisticated wearable camera systems such as described by Mann, are coupled with a wearable view finder to provide the wearer with confirmation that what the camera is seeing is what is required.
In Wearable Visual Robots (IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computing, ISWC'00, Atlanta, October 2000) a wearable visual robot is disclosed having a camera carrying pan/tilt mechanism mounted on a wearer's shoulder. The mechanism has motion sensors attached to it, but there are no sensors attached to the wearer's head, so the device is unable to take into account the motion of the wearer's head relative to the body of the wearer. The aim of the approach in this document is to provide a sensor which “decouples camera movement from the wearer's posture and movements.” The aim is to allow the robot to choose what to look at. The motion sensors increase the ability of the camera to stabilise its line of vision on the image the robot decides should be captured, regardless of where the user's attention is focused.
Several other arrangements have also been proposed for capturing a panoramic image of a scene. The other arrangements include U.S. Pat. No. 6,141,034 which discloses a dodecahedral arrangement of sensors whose images can be combined into a single panoramic image. Also, U.S. Pat. No. 6,356,296 discloses a parabolic reflector to capture an entire 180° angle of view using a single sensor. The aim of both of these systems is to provide an image having a very wide angle field of view. A problem arising with panoramic view capture is that it is not clear what part of the image is of interest. Typically the entire panoramic view is not of interest, but merely a part thereof.